So, not a major issue, but more of an FYI for folks here as well those like @MrChromebox and others at Purism, but when (not powered down, just closed) not in use for 2 or 3 days, the laptop battery slowly drains to zero, which is not unexpected.
So plug in is required for a start up obviously, and once it reaches 4-5% or so, requires another restart (once it required 2) before anything seems to function, like web pages won’t load, LibreWolf browser won’t even open, Web just gives a blank page. Brave opened, but no pages will load. I eventually realized the first time this occurred that the time reverted back to date in July of 2021, and that issue alone seems to be what prevents so much from not functioning, so after fixing the date and time, and restarting, everything is fine as far as I can tell.
Just thought I would share, as for a newbie like me, checking if the date/time were correct was not what I thought of as the potential problem, and since this just happened again this morning, reminded me to post this.
Did fixing the date actually do anything? You still restarted, right?
All I can tell you is once I fixed the date, and then restarted, everything was fine again. Restarting without fixing the date did nothing.
Now I’m confused, because this sounds like you used to do your restart (or 2) without fixing the date first
That’s correct, the first time it happened, I did a few restarts hoping that would fix the issue, before noticing the date/time was wrong. After fixing that, and then restarting, the problems were gone.
The next couple times this has happened, since now I figured the time/date error was the cause, I waited until it charged a few percent, fixed the date/time, then restarted, and everything worked fine.
Gotcha. I guess setting the automatic date/time setting to on doesn’t work since it seems to not be able to connect to the internet?
Oh the age old trick on an HP3000 when the internal (soldered) battery goes south. Boots up to t972. But at least the boot dialog lets you change it before O/S kicks in.
I’m not certain, but for whatever reason, the date/time changes when battery goes to 0%. Also I can’t explain why what is needed to happen to fix the time/date automatically cannot occur after the battery dies completely, even when charging back up. Not even sure why the date/time changes because of the dead battery. As I said, a newbie, I could only guess at best.
There’s a setting, I think in the privacy section of settings, that allows the system to automatically check the internet for the proper date and time. When working correctly, it does this check after it boots up. If you say that web pages won’t load after the battery runs out, that suggests that there’s no internet connection, and thus the setting wouldn’t work. But maybe its worth a shot.
Yes, and requires location services which is off currently, but thanks.
Haven’t read every post but if your date and time are being reset when you battery dies, I would look at replacing the BIOS battery, if the L14 has one that is replaceable.
Do modern systems use a capacitor instead on the mainboard? Either way there is supposed to be a secondary system that keeps power to the BIOS and system clock. I would be interested why that doesn’t seem to be happening on your L14.
L14 don’t have separate CMOS battery, so RTC is being powered from regular battery.
RTC normally does not drain much energy, so it’s safe.
Rootcause you are losing Clock when you discharge battery to zero is a fact that every lithium ion battery have own controller, that will cut it off in situation of too deep discharge, to protect it from dropping current to state when you will not able to charge it back.
technically EC should sent Battery critical signal to the os arround 5-6% of juice, and forcefully shutdown around 2% , to leave enough juice to run rtc for weeks.
It seems not be a case.
anyway discharging battery below 10% is wrong idea, you are degrading it very drastically.
Agreed I need to do an actual power off each time instead of just closing the laptop.
I have the same issue. Whenever I leave the L14 in sleep mode with the cover closed and it depletes to 0% the time changes. Browsers won’t load properly because it will complain about mismatch of times with certificates. Changing the time back fixes the issue. I now make sure to power down (through terminal). I was wondering if anybody else had this issue.
If systemctl hibernate works for you that might be more convenient than power down (which suggest shutdown).
On Linux I absolutely recommend hibernation! I had my Librem 13 v2 die way too many times because a standby session was a bit longer than expected.
Hibernation works well even if you are RAM maxed.
Gotcha! I will do that from now on, thanks.
I have been very curious about the motivation behind this. Is it a security risk to have a CMOS battery?
Only if you don’t want it to default at every power cycle.
Do you just hibernate or do you hibernate encrypted? I didn’t look really into the feature, yet. As far as I remember hibernation is a security risk, because by default it is not done to an encrypted volume?